


Let Nothing You Dismay

by thought



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Domesticity, Gen, Obverse, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 15:38:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: The Doctor isn't at breakfast on Monday.





	Let Nothing You Dismay

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write some holiday fluff, and I also really wanted to explore what an [Obverse](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Obverse) version of this Team TARDIS would look like.  
> Unbetaed.

The Doctor isn't at breakfast on Monday.

Graham's done a whole fry-up, and the smell of fresh coffee and turkey bacon had lured Yaz upstairs to the kitchen still in her pyjamas and dressing gown, feet shoved into neon green wooly socks to fight off the icy drafts that sneak in through the narrow windows in the basement. It's been a mild winter up until now, but there's snow collecting on the window ledges and dusting the dead grass in the garden when Yaz looks outside, and she can see her breath when she leans too close to the glass.

"Looks like it'll be a white Christmas after all," Graham says, pleased. Ryan hums, disinterested or still half-asleep, into his coffee mug. Yaz leans against the worktop, watching Graham pull the last pieces of slightly singed toast from the toaster. There's no sound from upstairs, no creak of floorboards or running water, but it's not like The Doctor to have a lie in when she knows the rest of the household is going to be around in the morning.

Yaz had volunteered to work the Christmas Day shift at the station, but she's got the 24th off, and Ryan's boss had shut down the garage the Friday before and told him not to come in until after Boxing Day. She knows Graham will be driving one of the afternoon routes, but everything shuts down by 8:00 PM.

"Did The Doctor go out?" Yaz asks, taking the handful of silverware laid out beside the stovetop over to the table along with her mug.

"I heard her leave a while ago," Ryan says. "Don't know when she's planning to be back."

Yaz frowns. "Do you think she took her mobile?"

Ryan snorts. "I don't think she remembers she's got one most of the time."

Yaz shouldn't worry. The Doctor's an adult, has plenty of places she could have gone and it's not as if she needs to tell any of them. And yet, Yaz feels oddly unsettled, sits down beside Ryan at the table and bounces back up the next minute to look out the front window as if she can summon The Doctor with the power of her concern.

"You want to go take a look outside?" Ryan teases her. "Make sure she hasn't frozen to death in the... two whole inches of snow?"

Yaz huffs. "Maybe I do," she says, and then she has to follow through, yanking on her boots over her thick socks and a parka over her pyjama top.

"Don't be too long," Graham says, frowning at her outerwear choices.

"I'm just going to take a quick look 'round."

Outside it's gloomy and dull, the snow mostly stopped and leaving grey skies and grey slush in its wake. Yaz stamps her feet to keep the blood flowing as she heads down the front steps, out through the gate and along the pavement. She's not expecting to find The Doctor, not really, so naturally she finds her almost immediately. She's just across the road, facing away, leaned up against a fencepost like she's got nothing better to do. She's not dressed for the weather any better than Yaz is, no gloves or hat or scarf, just her usual coat. Yaz jogs across the road.

"Alright, Doctor," she calls. "What are you doing out here? Graham's made breakfast."

The Doctor glances over her shoulder and beams as soon as she sees Yaz approaching. "Hi Yaz! I'm waiting for the bus," she says, like Yaz has asked a silly question.

Yaz knows there are no bus stops near their house. "What bus are you waiting for, then?" she asks, teasing a bit, but gently in case The Doctor really is unwell. She can never tell when The Doctor has a fever, her skin never seems to get warm.

"The Number 22," The Doctor says, with complete confidence. And then, suddenly unsure, "It's meant to be right there." She's pointing into the overgrown front garden of the house across the road and down a bit from theirs, the one that's been empty for as long as Yaz can remember. "I mean-- obviously it's not going to drive right through the fence, but that's where it's supposed to be."

"Buses are barely running today anyway," Yaz says, putting a hand on The Doctor's arm. "You know how Graham's been bellowing about it all month. How it's not right and all."

"Yeah," says The Doctor. "He's right, you know. People have places to go, just because it's a holiday doesn't change that."

Yaz agrees, has plenty of irritated grumbles about the entire town coming to a halt on arbitrary days, but right now she just wants to get The Doctor back inside. "Yeah, and where do you have to go today, then?"

The Doctor sticks out her tongue. "I could have lots of places to go. Plenty of business to be about. Regular social butterfly, me. A real man about town. Maybe I was going to visit my grannies. Spread some holiday cheer. That's what you're meant to do on Christmas, awkward smalltalk and trying to wipe the kisses off your cheek without offending anybody."

Yaz starts gently steering them both back towards the house, and The Doctor wanders along agreeably. "And just how many grandmothers do you have?"

The Doctor grins. "Seven."

Yaz considers herself a pretty open-minded person, so she decides discretion is the better part of valour and doesn't ask.

"I've got my favourites, of course, but you can't tell any of them. It's very important, the sevens. Seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and back and back and back until they first walked on land."

The Doctor gets like this, sometimes. Usually she's better at hiding it, covering for her confusion with a fast joke or a twist in the conversation. She's got a bit of a reputation as an eccentric, and Yaz half suspects she's done it on purpose so nobody calls her out on the odd things she says sometimes. She never talks about it after, and Yaz has yet to push it. It's not like it'd do any good-- Yaz is no psychologist, and The Doctor won't take any sort of medication anyway's, had thrown herself backwards across the sofa the one time Graham had offered her an Aspirin for her headache.

Back at the door to the house, Yaz sees someone's left a package on the front steps while they've been out, and clearly Ryan and Graham haven't noticed. Maybe something from one of Ryan's mates down at the technical college, or one of The Doctor's odd assortment of friends leaving some sort of ridiculous oddity (Yaz is still 99% sure Dorothy had given The Doctor plastic explosives last year).

Neither Yaz nor Graham have the sort of friends who leave packages on their steps. She knows they're the two that everyone expects to be the more sociable, but every friendship that Yaz creates seems to fall short in some inexplicable way, still leaves some empty, hollow place inside her where she knows there should be people, connections. She's never asked Graham if it's the same for him, but she thinks it might be.

"Careful with the bubble wrap," The Doctor says, tensing up as Yaz leans down to pick up the box.

"I know," Yaz says. It's another one of those little peculiarities it's not worth asking further about.

The Doctor perks up as soon as the door to the house swings open. "Oh, has Graham made breakfast?"

"he's gone all out with it, too," Yaz nods.

The Doctor beams, and barely takes the time to kick her shoes off before she's hurrying into the kitchen, trailing melting snow off the shoulders of her coat.

Yaz opens the package in the front hall. There's no bubble wrap, just a variety of biscuits and chocolate and wine, all wrapped in gold foil and red ribbons.

"We've got a gift from the Ponds," she says, coming into the kitchen and propping the card up against the kettle.

"Oh no," The Doctor says. "I hope Amy didn't bake those herself. I used to babysit her when she was a little girl and the one time I tried to teach her to bake she made an absolute mess of the kitchen."

"It's not as if you're any better, doc," Graham retorts, amused. Yaz pops a chocolate in her mouth.

"I'll have you know I used to be an excellent baker," The Doctor tells Graham, placing her hands on her hips and making a show of mock-indignance.

"Must've been before we moved in," Graham says, and hands a plate to The Doctor. "Here, I made you a plate. I was worried Ryan was going to eat everything before you two got back in here."

The Doctor slips past Yaz on her way to sit down, and snatches one of the chocolates from the package with a conspiratorial grin at Yaz. Yaz feels the familiar flush of heat in her cheeks, and ducks her head so her hair falls forward. She busies herself dishing up her own breakfast, and by the time she comes to sit down at the table with everyone else The Doctor and Graham are engaged in a full-fledged debate about their respective baking abilities-- which Yaz is quite certain rival each other for the pure lack of them.

"Where were you off to this morning?" Ryan asks The Doctor as soon as there's a break in the increasingly ridiculous argument. Yaz kicks him under the table. He glares at her, then turns back to The Doctor.

The Doctor stabs her fork into a slice of tomato with careful deliberation, shoulders hunching a bit. "Just for a walk," she says. "Get some fresh air. Greet the day before 9:00 AM, you should give it a try, Ryan."

Ryan rolls his eyes. "I thought maybe you were off on some sort of secret Christmas errands."

"Nah," The Doctor says. "Where else could I possibly want to be on Christmas than here? With my fam."

"Gang," says Ryan.

"Team," says Graham.

"Fam," says Yaz. The Doctor takes her hand under the table.


End file.
